


Sarabande

by Alexa C (marylex)



Series: Three Kings [2]
Category: Oz (HBO)
Genre: Character of Color, Disability, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-06
Updated: 2006-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:43:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marylex/pseuds/Alexa%20C
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like nothing you've ever heard before. An interlude with music.</p><p>Written for the Oz Gift of the Magi Challenge, 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sarabande

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tboy (Rose_Gialle)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rose_Gialle/gifts).



This is how it starts:

It's the music that draws you - low, sweet mournful sounds plucking at you, pulling you. The clatter of kitchen utensils and the shouting of the other prisoners - all that falls away. The ripe smell of overcooked vegetables laced sharp with detergent and bleach fades. Your world narrows to the sound that wraps around you, curls inside you, pulls something tight in your chest.

You move forward, wide-eyed. The music laps out and fills the space you keep around yourself, the cushion of reserve you've put up. It's like nothing you've ever heard before. It's inescapable, more immediate and real than anything you ever flipped past on television, richer than any beats from a box on any street corner. You think if open your mouth, you could almost taste it - thick on your tongue, sweet and heavy like honey, dark and sharp like cinnamon.

Maybe you could drown in it.

It's like you've been hungry your whole life, and you didn't even know it. Like you've been trying and trying to fill yourself up with all of the wrong things, the red and the gold and the tits, running to help Burr and running to stay ahead of the cops and running to try to keep up with Vahue, and none of it ever satisfied you like this.

You'll remember the onstage tableau in flashes, images captured like the sepia-toned pictures your mother keeps stored between the pages of the worn-out Bible on her nightstand: The long curve of the instrument, like a woman's body; the glide of the bow across the strings; capable fingers curled around the neck. Some hot-shot, highbrow cellist, a furrow between his brows, expression intent, head tilted as he pulls the rich, low sounds out of the instrument, like he's listening to some secret language.

The bow scrapes, and thin mobile lips tighten before the music smoothes out, and dark lashes flutter against pale skin, and you can tell he's aware of you, despite the closed eyes. He shifts - subtly, but you know that tiny extra dramatic flair, the way he lifts his face to the crosshatched light that's falling across it - that's for you.

_Vain motherfucker_, you think.

It's a brief moment of amusement because the shift turned you from audience to intimate, from observer to confidante. Suddenly, that cello's talking to you, sounding almost human with its moans and its sighs, and you almost - almost - think you can understand what it's saying as the music slows, gentles. It whispers to you, and you lean forward, trying to catch the words. And that's when you're hooked, drawn into their circle, just him and the cello and you.

"It's priceless to me," he says later as your fingers glide across glossy wood, and you look up at him as he looks down at the instrument. They glow together, making the cool grey light that pervades Oz look somehow warmer, and maybe the cello's still reaching out to you even in the silence, because maybe you feel just a little bit warmer, too.

Still, you're a little staggered, a little humbled at being allowed to touch.

It's like you're touching him. You know. You've had motherfuckers who'll lean on your chair like it's an armrest, until you roll over a foot and jab them in the gut with one of those back handles. Some people got no respect for a man's personal space. Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile. In Oz, it's better to just keep your distance.

Dobbins, he's like goddamned Bambi, waiting to get run down, letting somebody touch him like this.

You can't decide if he's just that stupid, or if he's just that smart, because who are _you_ gonna run down? Even if you have the wheels to do it?

"Like this," he says, leaning in and folding his fingers around yours. You don't want to show any hesitation - any weakness - but you're afraid of snapping something that shouldn't be broken as he presses your hand into position around the neck of the cello, the strings vibrating against your fingertips, humming like your wheels in motion, full of possibility. His hands are sticky from the powder he used on the bow - tacky, your mother would call the sensation - and he rubs them impatiently on the rough fabric of his pants before leaning back into you, breath a warm, curiously scentless tickle against your cheek.

"Like this," he says again.

You press and pluck carefully, tilting your head to catch the sounds of the instrument, because if you listen closely, maybe you can hear what it might have to tell you. Maybe it'll give up some of its secrets.

This is how it goes:

He's restless, boxed in, the plexiglass walls of your pod too small, closing in on him as he paces, hands shoved in his pockets. Every now and then, he pulls them out and shakes them as if loosening his wrists. He's quiet, too quiet, but he's got to calm down, because he's even making you shake.

"Sit down, man, you're making me nervous." You grab his sleeve and pull.

When he folds himself down onto your bunk, you lean in and curl a capable hand around the nape of his neck, pressing your fingertips into the tense muscles there, feeling the leathered cup of your palm warming against his skin. You don't realize his knee is snugged against yours until you look down. The memory of Annabelle's knee pressing against yours under your mother's kitchen table, of the way she smiled at you the first time you brought her home - it's an ache in your chest. You welcome the little dig of his shoulder as he slumps into you.

"Thank you," he says, and you're still startled. Sincerity's still a novelty inside prison walls.

"You ever take off that uglyass hat?" It's not much of a response, but it's enough to drag a startled laugh from him as you shove it off his head.

You know.

A lot of people would look at him and see a fiend, jittering, _needing_ the hit that would calm the itch in his blood - no matter that it's music and not tits - but you remember waking up that first time, lying in the hospital bed, weighted down by your own body, stuck in place. You remember strings humming under your fingers like wheels, full of possibility, and you know the cello isn't an addiction.

It's freedom. Losing it would be like losing a limb, even if it's not the wheels that take the place of your legs.

You try to imagine knowing your chair is right there, just out of reach, locked away except for a single precious hour a day. If that ain't cruel and unusual punishment, what is?

Your fingers glide across the nape of his neck, over the knob at the crest of his spine and up into curls freed by your assault on that damn hat. The curls cushion his head against the leather of your glove as your hand curves around his skull, fingers buried in fine silken hair, and you lean into him.

"That's good?" you ask as your thumb rubs over the soft skin under his ear.

"That's good," he agrees. He shifts - subtly, but you know that tilt of his head, that long bared sweep of his neck, that's for you. Dark lashes flutter against pale skin.

_Vain motherfucker_, you think. You snort, and he makes a humming sound, curling further into you like some kind of lanky goddammed cat, and the little noise coils inside you, pulls something tight in your chest, right underneath the place his hand has come to rest, the cup of his palm warm through the thin material of your T-shirt. You find you have to take a deep breath.

When you tilt your head, his hair tickles your cheek. If you listen closely, maybe you can hear what he might have to tell you.

This is how it ends:

He's still wired, still high from the day's practice, from the skipping intermingled notes of the trumpet and the cello, the tangled interplay as the music chased itself back and forth across the stage. Maybe you are too, a little bit, but it's not like you'd admit it out loud, so you just laugh. You don't think anything of it when he slides off your bunk to his knees in front of you, not until the flow of words slows and you notice his hands sliding up your thighs.

"Oh, hey, no man, that's not ..." you put up your own hands and try to push him away, but he catches one wrist in those strong, clever fingers, slides the other hand under your T-shirt, touching the sensitive skin of your belly, just above the place where your body goes dead, and you know you want this.

"Can you ..." he says, questioning, trailing off as his thumb circles your left nipple. Your entire body seems to draw tight along with the tiny nub, tension focused on it as that thumb brushes over it.

"What? Yes, I can, what are you ..." You trail off and wave your free hand. "I just can't feel it. So, you know ..."

_Don't think you need to do this for me_, is what you mean to say, but you can't get the words out.

"Nothing?" He tilts his head. "Anywhere?"

"What?"

He gives a furtive look around - with your back to the door of the pod, your own body hides a lot of this, but you never know who might be peering around - and he licks his lips, and _Jesus_, you think, wondering if he's going to go down on you, and you don't even know if you're too far gone to care that it's going to be an awful lot of effort and risk for limited return - for you, anyway - but when he leans in, he licks a line up your throat instead, before sucking lightly at your Adam's apple. You can feel each one of the calluses on his fingertips as he runs them across your collarbone, over your throat, traces the bones of your face, plucking at you, pulling you. It's been so long since someone's touched you, since you let anyone touch you, and you drink it in, wondering - although you can't make yourself worry - if you're going to drown. When your lips part and you pull in a shaky breath, his fingers slick across your mouth and your tongue flickers out - he tastes slightly bitter, the ghost of the powder from his bow still clinging to him.

There's an itch building deep in your bones, settling into the joints that hang you together, spreading through your sternum to radiate out to the tips of your fingers. You just can't help it when it pulls a small sound from the back of your throat.

"Should I stop?" he asks, and _Jesus_, you think, _it sounds like he actually means it_, and _no, please, God, don't_, you want to say.

The hand under your shirt was cool, but it's heating up fast as he spreads his fingers and presses his palm against your chest. It's like the calluses on his fingertips catch and tangle in your breath, and you have to gasp for air again. When you open your eyes he's looking up at you, furrow between his brows, expression intent, head still tilted as he pulls the low sounds out of you, like he's listening to some secret language.

He's greedy, and that's fine with you. It's no surprise - he's nothing close to fat, but there's a slight roundness to his face, a softness to the flesh on his hips and flanks when you run a hand under the back of his shirt and the loose waistband of his pants. It's all good, because it's like he can't get enough of your skin under his hands and lips and teeth. His fingers trace the curve of your ribs, skirt the blurry line of sensation over the top of your hipbone, while his lips and breath feather hot and wet along your jaw, turning you on even before you feel the scrape and nip of teeth against your earlobe.

"Beautiful, but lonely." You can hear his voice, but you can't tell if he's said it out loud or if it's just a memory, something inside your head.

Your eyelids are heavy, and your head; your whole body sprawls under a lassitude that's more than gravity and its own weight. It's like tits, only it's not, because underneath this languor there's a crystal-sharp clarity that flares along the paths he's tracing on your skin.

You can feel the curve and heat of his body against your side and down to your waist, and when you let your eyelids fall shut again, you can see a picture of what you could look like with the luxury of time and space and privacy, sheets rumpled around you, pale skin against dark, his leg over yours, threaded between your thighs, tucked against you like his face is tucked into your neck.

When he pushes up your shirt and dips his head, sucking and biting at one nipple while his fingers worry the other, phantom pleasure curls through you, leaving behind a heaviness that seeps slow and sweet through your chest like honey.

You don't realize he's come, too, until you look down.


End file.
